The ubiquity of documentary films in social studies courses, along with their potential to influence what students learn, clearly show that documentary films matter in social studies education. While the high rate of documentary film usage by social studies teachers indicates that they are amenable to bringing new films into their classrooms, they also know that some films can provoke uproar in some communities. This is more likely to occur when the film is cutting edge--whether it's ahead of the mainstream consensus on what is considered school knowledge, perceived as taking a position on an issue that is highly controversial, or about a topic that some parents or other community members consider taboo. As a case in point, teachers in Federal Way School District, south of Seattle, were criticized for showing "An Inconvenient Truth" (a 2006 documentary, featuring Al Gore on the perils of global warming) because, as one parent argued, "Condoms don't belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He's not a schoolteacher." Expecting documentary films to be neutral renditions of objective truth is problematic, because that is not typically their purpose. Better for social studies teachers to understand documentary films as what their makers intend them to be--perspective-laden narratives. In this article, the author has chosen three documentary films shown at the Sundance Film Festival to illustrate the role of perspective in documentary filmmaking. These documentary films are: (1) "Banished"; (2) "Miss Navajo"; and (3) "Brother Outsider". After viewing the films, the author interviewed their directors to get a sense of their purposes in making them. She asked what perspectives they hoped to portray, the ways in which the content of the film could be controversial, and how the high school students who viewed it at special Sundance screenings for students (or in schools) reacted. (Contains 16 notes.)